P'town Murders: A Bradford Fairfax Murder Mystery (27 page)

It was a cornucopia, a veritable sex-a-thon of the rich and gayly famous engaged in trysts with houseboys, pool boys, altar boys, pizza delivery men, world-class hustlers, and cowboys on crack. Here, at last, was motive! He was witnessing a spectacle for which the price tag would be inestimable to some and simply unimaginable to others.

Most important, the tapes could probably tell him who'd been at the guesthouse the night of Ross's murder. That was the proof he needed! Brad quickly looked through the entire cabinet, but realized with a jolt that all the tapes from that evening were missing. Someone had removed every single one, along with a number of others at periodic intervals.
A very queer fish, indeed,
he could hear Hayden say. Who had been there that night?

He still didn't have the evidence he needed to collar Ross's killer, but it was time to call Tom Nava all the same. His role in the P'Town escapade was nearly done.

He closed the cabinet and reached for the ladder. Halfway down, he gripped the rungs and paused to rub his forehead. His legs felt weak. His vision was clouded and his heart beat like a tom-tom.
Whoa!
Too much caffeine, he told himself. He waited till the sensation abated before continuing.

At the bottom he turned and found himself staring down the barrel of a Colt .45. At the other end stood Johnny K.

35

Brad waited, but nothing happened. Either that or death meant you were frozen in time with your mind focused on the last image you saw before you croaked. Slowly, Johnny K. lowered the gun until it no longer pointed at his head. This was no bardo.

"I guess you're wondering how I got into the house," Brad said.

"Not really," the muscle stud said in a raspy voice that was the vocal equivalent of a carrot grater. "I just wondered why you came in the window when the front door was unlocked."

Brad blushed. He hadn't even thought to try it.

"What I'm really wondering is
why
you're in the house, but I think I've got that one covered, too."

Johnny K.'s voice grated harshly in his ear. Brad recognized it. This was the voice that had told him over the phone about Ross's death! It was also the last voice he'd heard -before being hit on the head and dumped on the highway! One mystery solved, Brad thought. But will I live to solve the others?

Johnny K. tucked the gun in its holster. Clearly, he didn't think he was going to have to use it. Brad started to swoon again, feeling the same dizzy sensation he'd experienced on the ladder as Johnny K. wavered in and out of his field of vision.

Brad shook his head. "It was you who called me about Ross, wasn't it?"

Johnny K. smiled. "I knew you'd come to fetch the body when you heard about it. Ross always said you were such a
faithful
friend."

Brad sensed an ironic tone he didn't care for.

"But I never thought you'd be stupid enough to get so involved in things here. You made it very uncomfortable for all of us."

"So why even call me at all?"

"I tried Ross's family, but they wanted nothing to do with him, being good Christians and all. Seems they didn't think he'd gone any place they'd be meeting up with him again soon. But we couldn't have his body traced back here. And the longer it sat, the likelier that would have been. That's where you came in handy."

A pounding filled Brad's ears. His mouth was dry. "Why did you kill him?"

Johnny K. laughed. "What makes you think it was me?"

"Who else could it be? I already know you killed your boss. I have a tape that incriminates you in his shooting."

Johnny K.'s face clouded. "There's no such tape!" he snarled.

"There surely is," Bradford said.

"Prove it!"

Well, Brad realized, there's only one way to find out if I'm right. "The video shows you with a snake tattoo on your right shoulder blade."

"Fuck you!"
screamed Johnny K. "Who the hell gave you that tape?"

"You tell me," Brad said. "It came sailing through my window the other night. It must have been a friend of yours. Maybe someone wants to get rid of you."

"Jeremiah!" Johnny K. sneered. "He thinks he can run this place by himself with me out of the way. And he's counting on those tapes to help. It's called 'blackmail.'"

Bingo!
Brad thought. "Is that why you killed your boss?"

Johnny K. shook his head. "I didn't kill him. But that won't matter to you soon. You'll be in la-la-land in another minute," he said, flexing his powerful fingers. "And then I'm outta here."

Stall for time! Brad told himself. He noticed a swelling in the bodyguard's pants. It seemed Johnny K. got a little hot over his killings.

"I have to say, I'm mighty intrigued by what I've heard about you," Brad said. "Considering that you've been written up as a legend in your own time."

"What kind of legend is that?" Johnny K. asked, coming closer.

"A very big one," Brad said, feeling his knees buckle. He reached out to steady himself against a wall.

"Tch-tch.
You seemed to have scratched yourself on our hedge," Johnny K. said. "That could be a problem."

Brad looked down. An angry red welt showed where his forearm had brushed the belladonna bush.

"A problem for you, I mean." Johnny K. smiled like Stanley Kowalski cornering his pesky sister-in-law, Blanche. "I think we've had this date from the beginning," he said as Brad slumped to the floor.

Brad felt himself being picked up and carried down the hall where he was unceremoniously dropped onto Hayden Rosengarten's oak desk. Through bleary eyes he saw the lens of a camera pointing at him.

"Time for your close-up," Johnny K. said.

He stood back and tugged on his T-shirt, pulling it overhead like a man born to take his clothes off. A large '.K' was tattooed on his chest. And there was the snake coiled on his right shoulder.
It was him!

"How do you feel?" Johnny K. asked. "Is your mouth dry? Vision a little cloudy? Those are the first symptoms. Heart palpitations should follow."

Brad tried to speak, but no sound emerged.

"You'll probably experience a few hallucinations, too," Johnny K. said as he unhooked Brad's belt and slipped off his pants. "Pretty soon you'll fall into a coma and your vital signs will cease," he said. "Poor you."

He held up a vial of white powder and sprinkled some on the back of his hand. "Too bad you're not a drug user," he said. "All it takes to counteract belladonna is a little opium... like this." He sniffed sharply and the powder disappeared up his nose.

He placed the vial on the desk a few inches from Brad's head. As much as he would have liked to, Brad couldn't coordinate his muscles to reach out and grasp it.

He tried to concentrate, focusing on the 'K' on Johnny K.'s chest. "Nice tattoo. What's the 'K' stand for?" he gasped.

Johnny K. smiled. "Karma," he said. "Meet your fate, Bradford Fairfax."

His hands ripped open Brad's T-shirt, exposing the wings on his abdomen. "Hey! Nice tattoo, yourself."

Brad heard the slither of leather against skin as Johnny K. slipped deftly out of his pants.

"I think this has your name on it," Johnny K. said, grabbing Bradford's legs and hoisting them over his shoulders.

Brad looked down. The letters Y-O-U-R N-A-M-E were etched from base to tip on what was truly a magnificent piece of equipment.

Not exactly B-R-A-D-F-O-R-D F-A-I-R-F-A-X or even S-E-B-A-S-T-I-A-N O-'S-H-A-U-G-H-N-E-S-S-Y, but hardly a disappointment, Brad thought, watching it disappear one letter at a time. Maybe dying wasn't so bad after all.

"You fuck real good," Johnny K. said with a sneer. "But I bet you hear that all the time."

The words came to him through a haze. Brad tried to focus, struggling for clarity.

"In fact, you fuck better than your dead boyfriend."

Ross's face rose before him. Something powerful reared inside him as Brad's mind clicked back to full consciousness.

"Bastard!"

With one solid blow Johnny K. flew backward into the filing cabinet and slumped to the floor.

Brad quickly had the top off the glass vial and took a sniff. Johnny K. was right—a snort of the white powder cleared his head of the last vestiges of fogginess.

He soon had the bodyguard's arms secured with his own belt. Then he dragged him toward the wall and felt around for the hidden panel. Sure enough, a door slid open.

"I'll let you know when it's time to come out," he called to the groggy figure bound hand-and-foot and lying on the floor of the secret chamber.

Brad went over to Hayden's desk and dialed the police. Tom Nava came on the line and Brad explained where the murderer could be found, along with an intriguing library of videotapes.

"You doing my job for me now?" Nava grunted.

"Consider it a favor," Brad said.

He hung up and got dressed, and then walked over to the camera. He rewound the tape and pushed Play. On screen, his limp body appeared at the mercy of Johnny K. Brad couldn't help noticing the smile on his face.

He watched for a moment longer, then turned off the camera. If he destroyed the tape, he reasoned, he'd be tampering with evidence. Then again, did he really want this shown in court? He stuffed it into his pocket. It would make a nice little addition to his collection of autoerotica.

36

Sometime during the night Hurricane Isabel slammed into the North Carolina coast at more than one-hundred miles an hour, leaving a trail of havoc in her wake. She then headed inland, turning north and away from Cape Cod before beginning her inevitable descent into a tropical storm and finally to a wisp of a breeze that would be scarcely a memory for most people within a week.

That night Bradford slept a dreamless sleep. When he woke, he checked his answering service but there was nothing from Zach. He felt let down. He would've liked some small reminder of Zach's presence, especially since they'd spent the night apart. Maybe Zach was already getting cold feet. Either that or the seriousness of the situation had dawned on him and he'd been scared off at last.

The only message was from Grace. She congratulated him on capturing Johnny K. and said the tip about the gun had panned out. They'd located it off the end of the pier in about ten feet of water. It had turned out to be a Colt .45, as they knew it would. All that remained to be seen was which gun the bullet had actually been fired from—Big Ruby's or Johnny K.'s. The gun had been surprisingly easy to find, Grace added, almost as an afterthought.

Brad was left to read into that last remark as he brought his breakfast out to the veranda. He looked down at his abs, remembering the bodyguard's magnificent body, and pushed aside half a bagel covered in cream cheese. Time to get back to the gym, he told himself. That's how it always starts. You take your mind off it for a day and
bingo!,
flab starts forming like ice crystals on a window. At first it's a thin coating, then next thing you know it's so thick you can't see out.

He watched his abdomen expand and contract with each breath. These days, just dieting wasn't enough. You could be out at the gym feeling great about yourself when some muscle queen with a three-percent body fat ratio catches your eye and paranoia strikes a home run. Do I have love handles? Wobbly thighs? Why do I stay home watching TV when I could be in here pumping iron another five or six hours a day?

The phone interrupted his self-reproach.

"Care to take your sugar to tea?" It was Cinder.

They confirmed for a pleasant little seaside cafe, then Brad phoned Zach's guesthouse. There was no answer. He left a message saying where he could be found.

Cinder was waiting outside the cafe in a frilly knee-length skirt and bobbed platinum wig, his arms covered in silver bangles. Was this Marilyn? Brad wondered. It wasn't trashy enough to be Madonna.

"Neither. I'm Renée Zellweger in
Chicago,"
Cinder announced when he asked.

"Thoroughly Post-Modern Cinder," Bradford said. "And just about as up to date as a girl can be."

At that moment a gym queen strode past in a thong and sleeveless T-shirt. Brad's eyes wandered over the man's flawless physique.

Cinder shot him a glance. "Fashion Rule Number One: a thong is always wrong," he stated categorically. "Remember that, handsome."

Brad brought Cinder up to date during lunch, mentioning that he'd been able to ascertain the validity of Johnny K.'s status as a legend, without going into too much detail.

"You lucky tart! Well, now that you've got things all wrapped up here, I suppose you'll be going home soon," Cinder said.

"That's likely, but I come back once or twice a year, so I can catch your show again some time."

Cinder reached across the table and touched the back of his hand. "So sweet," he said. "But I still find it hard to believe it was Johnny K. I mean, I know he was a vicious thug but I didn't think he was a killer, too!"

"Appearances can be deceiving," Brad said.

"How did you end up fingering him?"

"Someone sent me a tape of Hayden sitting in a bathtub. In the mirror I could make out a figure threatening him with a gun. When I slowed the tape, I saw a tattoo on the killer's right shoulder."

Cinder grabbed Brad's arm. "You don't mean the 'Oh, it's so big, shoot me!' tape?"

Brad started. "How do you know about it?"

"Honey, we all had to audition for Hayden. That was his favorite scenario. He liked his boys big and deadly. I'm pretty handy with a gun myself, if I may say so, though I doubt I'd ever match Johnny K.'s stupendous nether regions..."

Brad was staring at him. "Are you saying the tape isn't real?"

"No, honey, I'm sure it's real, if you saw it. What I'm saying is, we all made a 'bang-bang, you're dead' tape with Hayden. I think he wanted it in case anyone tried to blackmail
him,
so he'd have something on each of us."

Brad's head was reeling. It had all been a dress-up game! "Then who...?"